“You need me to call Faye?”
“No, Uncle Kenny. You don’t need to call her.”
He swipes his gloved hand across his forehead and wrinkles his eyebrows. “Oh, well, did you need a few dollars or something?”
“I don’t need money.”
I think I was six the first and last time Uncle Kenny asked me a question about something that didn’t revolve around the mundane happenings in our house—like asking me to keep the hallway light off so the light bill wouldn’t go up, or asking me to knock on him and Aunt Faye’s bedroom door before I opened it.
I nod toward the tattered bag. “Everything okay at the gym?”
He pulls off a glove while I try to chip away at that “biological thing” that always floats between us.
“You know how it is with them boys—trouble just always seems to find them and then it finds me in return.”
“Yeah…I remember you used to let Zaire come over for dinner sometimes because you found out his daddy had put a lock on their refrigerator. He ate cauliflower for the first time at our house.” I snort, remembering the way he scrunched his face up after asking Aunt Faye what it was. “I’m sure you can handle whatever trouble this new one is bringing.”
He looks away, then pushes the bag with both hands to steady it. “Hmph. Zaire, Legend, and EJ were malleable at least. They were bullheaded, but they were also boys at the end of the day. They still had some hope left in ‘em.”
I let out a soft hum, taking a slurp of the bitter coffee. “I’m sure Rich still has some hope left in him too.”
The sound of Rich’s name makes his top lip curl and his eyes roll toward the house. “I don’t know about that. He done aged out of that ‘hopeful’ phase.”
I swallow the sharp aftertaste of the coffee and run my tongue along the parts of my mouth that it singed. “You really think so?”
“Listen, when you live the type of lifestyle he lives, ain’t no such thing as hope. It’s just eat or get ate and Rich been eating for over fourteen years.”
I want to argue back, but it’s not like Rich ever told me any differently. He always made it sound better by sandwiching the words between kisses and his own version of sweet nothings that I held onto and replayed in my head while I laid awake at night fantasizing about silly things, like us existing together somewhere else where we were normal and not broken.
“Faye thinks because she knew him as a lil’ boy that he’s still that same kid, but…” He frowns, shaking his head. “The game is the game…and it’s a cold one.”
“Do you think there’s ever really a way out?”
“I used to…” He stares off into the backyard, shaking his head. “But the hold that…that?—”
“Place?”
His eyes widen and I take another sip of coffee before murmuring, “I know they’re still fighting down at Lucky’s. That’s what Rich does—he fights. And that’s where your fighters come from—Lucky’s.”
“Who told you that?”
“I’m…I’m not six anymore, Uncle Kenny.”
He lifts his bare fist, nudging the bag with his knuckles. “Yeah, you’re not.”
I stare at my feet as Old Man Hester’s rooster crows from next door. The silence between us is a familiar one that I never bothered to break until now.
“Do you like me living with you and Aunt Faye?”
“What you mean?”
I glance back up at him. “Remember that time you asked me if I liked living with you and Aunt Faye?”
“I don’t think I do.”
“Well, you asked me that. We were parked outside H-E-B and you asked if I liked living with y’all while Aunt Faye was inside buying a Coke.”
He scratches the back of his bald head and looks everywhere but in my eyes, but I chase after them until he turns his head away from me.
